Chris's Worthington Brewery Pump

[Kim]

What a fun weekend!  Great videos of you running things there, Chris! 

Kim

[crueby]

What a fun weekend!  Great videos of you running things there, Chris! 

Kim

Thanks  Kim!  We had a ball, great group there. We even had Alvin Lombards (great?) grandson visit, that was neat. Also another father and son of the guy that owned the company who had two of the gas powered haulers, he played on them as a kid but had never seen them running.

[cnr6400]

  Really enjoyed the videos and pics Chris! Nice bit of driving, steering, and whistle work. Re whistle work, did you manage to wake the steersman up before he fell off? 

Love the rumble and grind of the chassis from the in-cab video. I had a late 60's Mercury Marquis car once, for a short time - the rear end in it sounded just like that! 

Hope you had a great time in Maine! 

[crueby]

Really enjoyed the videos and pics Chris! Nice bit of driving, steering, and whistle work. Re whistle work, did you manage to wake the steersman up before he fell off? 

Love the rumble and grind of the chassis from the in-cab video. I had a late 60's Mercury Marquis car once, for a short time - the rear end in it sounded just like that! 

Hope you had a great time in Maine! 

It was a fantastic trip!


Fun part is letting visitors climb up to the steersman seat for pictures, then tell them to pull on that handle for the whistle. Boy, do they jump!

[crueby]

Back in the shop again today after the trip. The shop elves gave me some dirty looks when I blew the steam whistle to wake them up...   
Got started on the check valve seals. Drilled holes in a strip of 1/16" silicon rubber sheet stock, held between two strips of wood to hold it steady. Cut them into squares, and glued each to one end of a valve with some E6000. In this picture they are set on the outside of a check valve just to keep the rubber pads flat, but they are only glued to the valve stem.

After the glue sets up I'll go back with scissors and trim around the disc.
Then got started on all the holes for the valve bodies to screw into. They all are a M11x0.75 thread, which I don't have a proper drill size for, so I am using the rotary table to mill the openings. I could use the lathe and drill/bore, but the upper plate would hang out too far to do the holes in the corners. I'm using a four-jaw chuck to position them quickly, really only clamping with two jaws, third is to position it and fourth removed since it won't reach the end of the plate. I got the table position set by testing with a scrap piece, then did the real holes with a plunge cut and rotating the table around. Once it was positioned for one corner, the opposite corner was the same position, just spun the plate around 180 in the chuck.

I did goof the layout on the first of the inner set, a little too close to the center divider but it will still fit so I don't need to remake it.

After all drilled did the tapping of the holes...

and have started doing a similar pattern in the upper plate. The first one is the intake set, with the water chamber through the middle, the upper plate bolts on top of the pump housing and sends water to the outlet pipe and the force chamber.

You can probably tell this upper plate is a different color - all I had in 1/8" plate was some 206 brass - not my favorite but it works fine for this. The only other 1/8" plate I have on hand is some C353 engravers brass, which I am saving for what may be the next project, a scaled down tower clock I adapted from a book a number of years ago but never got around to. Kim's clock has inspired me to dig out the CAD drawings for it and finish them up... It will likely be one of the next projects, never know till chips fly on it!

[Kim]

Love the herd of valves with their diapers glued on!  Interesting way to cut the valve holes too.   

Looking forward to seeing your tower clock project, Chris!  I'm sure having a blast with my clock 

Kim

[cnr6400]

 

[bent]

We have a set of gasket punches and leather punches for making holes in seal rubber...but drill and scissors work well too.  Fingernail scissors for that size might work well?

Love those pictures.  There was a series of geocaches done on the working state forest near my home (Washington uses state forest land proceeds (lumber sales) to fund K-12 education).  In the olden days (ca. 1905 to 1945), that forest was owned and logged by the Cherry Valley Timber Co.  Prior to WW2, all of the motive transport was done by logging railroads, the beds of which today are the gravel roads for logging trucks.  The people who set up the geocaches had one of the last surviving lumbermen from that era take them around and show them where different train car camps were located.  We could still see the beds of the railroad ties (now filled in with moss) in some places, now a hundred or so years later.  We can also find stumps with springboard notches 6-8 feet above the ground, of trees that were 8+ feet in diameter, cut by two-man teams with whipsaws.

[steam guy willy]

Hi "C"  I noticed that the rivets on the Lombards boiler backplate were quite pointed  rather than semicircular ?? is this common practice in the US ??   looking Good on your build..

Willy

[crueby]

We have a set of gasket punches and leather punches for making holes in seal rubber...but drill and scissors work well too.  Fingernail scissors for that size might work well?

Love those pictures.  There was a series of geocaches done on the working state forest near my home (Washington uses state forest land proceeds (lumber sales) to fund K-12 education).  In the olden days (ca. 1905 to 1945), that forest was owned and logged by the Cherry Valley Timber Co.  Prior to WW2, all of the motive transport was done by logging railroads, the beds of which today are the gravel roads for logging trucks.  The people who set up the geocaches had one of the last surviving lumbermen from that era take them around and show them where different train car camps were located.  We could still see the beds of the railroad ties (now filled in with moss) in some places, now a hundred or so years later.  We can also find stumps with springboard notches 6-8 feet above the ground, of trees that were 8+ feet in diameter, cut by two-man teams with whipsaws.

Great history. Do any of the locomotives still survive anywhere? A quick search online indicates they used Shays and Baldwins?

[crueby]

Hi "C"  I noticed that the rivets on the Lombards boiler backplate were quite pointed  rather than semicircular ?? is this common practice in the US ??   looking Good on your build..

Willy

I think it varied with the boiler maker, I've seen both styles. On this particular boiler, those rivets are actually dummies! When they restored the Lombard to working order, the Maine state regulations forbid using the original boiler since it was a lapped seam boiler. Later Lombards used a butt-seam boiler with a doubler plate on the seam, which IS still okay in Maine. So, the museum had a new boiler made with all welded seams, and the company added the dummy rivets to make it look like the original. The original boiler is on display outside the Machinery Hall building, great since it shows all the firetubes/etc. I had to scale down the picture for this post, but in the high res version the points are visible on the rivets.

The second steam Lombard at the museum, on loan from the Crooker family, is a later one that has the butt seam boiler. It is complete, but has not had a formal annual inspection in a number of years. The steam dome in the picture shows how tall it is - so it extends above the top of the saddle tank, and also raises it so water will not get into the pipe on hills.
 

[crueby]

Love the herd of valves with their diapers glued on!  Interesting way to cut the valve holes too.   

Looking forward to seeing your tower clock project, Chris!  I'm sure having a blast with my clock 

Kim

Hi Kim!
Hope the valves dont soil their diapers... 

I've been ticking away on the CAD version of the tower clock, when its farther along I'll post some screen shots. Just got the motion work on, and need to check the rotation direction of the ratchets and escape wheels to make sure its all facing the right direction, or it will go back in time!  I have a couple of commercial-made spring drums/springs that I'll use. I'm allowing for two in case it needs the extra force. The tower clock is set up with a setting dial on the front, and the main dial/hands extend out the top with bevel gears and a shaft so it can be up the tower. I'll probably make a small tower unit and hang it on the wall above the clock mechanism. Those extra gears add more resistance, so I'm not sure if one drum will do the job. On Wildings prototype in the book, the unit is much larger with a very heavy weight that goes through the floor on a long cable - I switched to wind-up for my version, and scaled it down to use Module 1 gears, with a 1/2 second tick rather than his one-second tick. That also changed the intermediate gear arrangement - lots of time in a spreadsheet! He also started with a grasshopper escapement, I'll use a normal recoil one instead, which he also changed to years later. The book is a gathering of his magazine articles, showing the evolution of his design, so its a little hard to follow in places. Should be an interesting project though!
 

[steam guy willy]

Hi "C"  I noticed that the rivets on the Lombards boiler backplate were quite pointed  rather than semicircular ?? is this common practice in the US ??   looking Good on your build..

Willy

I think it varied with the boiler maker, I've seen both styles. On this particular boiler, those rivets are actually dummies! When they restored the Lombard to working order, the Maine state regulations forbid using the original boiler since it was a lapped seam boiler. Later Lombards used a butt-seam boiler with a doubler plate on the seam, which IS still okay in Maine. So, the museum had a new boiler made with all welded seams, and the company added the dummy rivets to make it look like the original. The original boiler is on display outside the Machinery Hall building, great since it shows all the firetubes/etc. I had to scale down the picture for this post, but in the high res version the points are visible on the rivets.

The second steam Lombard at the museum, on loan from the Crooker family, is a later one that has the butt seam boiler. It is complete, but has not had a formal annual inspection in a number of years. The steam dome in the picture shows how tall it is - so it extends above the top of the saddle tank, and also raises it so water will not get into the pipe on hills.
 

Hi Chris , thanks for the reply and the pic of the original boiler,   here in the UK the rivets are left one and a half times the diameter proud of the boiler shell and the riveting gun has a semi circular snap and this is pushed in a circular motion to close them up
cheers , willy

[Kim]

Love the herd of valves with their diapers glued on!  Interesting way to cut the valve holes too.   

Looking forward to seeing your tower clock project, Chris!  I'm sure having a blast with my clock 

Kim

Hi Kim!
Hope the valves dont soil their diapers... 

I've been ticking away on the CAD version of the tower clock, when its farther along I'll post some screen shots. Just got the motion work on, and need to check the rotation direction of the ratchets and escape wheels to make sure its all facing the right direction, or it will go back in time!  I have a couple of commercial-made spring drums/springs that I'll use. I'm allowing for two in case it needs the extra force. The tower clock is set up with a setting dial on the front, and the main dial/hands extend out the top with bevel gears and a shaft so it can be up the tower. I'll probably make a small tower unit and hang it on the wall above the clock mechanism. Those extra gears add more resistance, so I'm not sure if one drum will do the job. On Wildings prototype in the book, the unit is much larger with a very heavy weight that goes through the floor on a long cable - I switched to wind-up for my version, and scaled it down to use Module 1 gears, with a 1/2 second tick rather than his one-second tick. That also changed the intermediate gear arrangement - lots of time in a spreadsheet! He also started with a grasshopper escapement, I'll use a normal recoil one instead, which he also changed to years later. The book is a gathering of his magazine articles, showing the evolution of his design, so its a little hard to follow in places. Should be an interesting project though!
 

Sounds fascinating!  I'm not familiar with John Wilding's tower clock. I'll learn about it along with everyone else!

Kim

[ShopShoe]

Crueby,

Regarding the logging Locomotives:

The Black Hills Railroad "1880 Train" owns three logging locomotives they brought in from the west coast. My wife and I rode this train several years ago when they were operating one of those (Probably 104).

Follow this link and look for information on No. 104 and 103 and 108. (Under "Rolling Stock Restoration")

https://www.1880train.com/history.html

--ShopShoe